Paul's Blog - All comments and views are my own,

A stroll around the lake this afternoon looking for dragonflies!!!! The park is very popular with locals and this afternoon there was a sponsored walk and a bike ride so it was even busier than usual according to the locals. With being quite windy, again, it was hard to get near the damselflies and I only saw one species of dragonfly. Male Black-tailed Skimmer, Orthetrum cancellatum Blue-tailed Damselfly, Ischnura elegans, mating  mature male Blue-tailed Damselfly, the thorax stripes on the males change colour as they mature, young males have green stripes

The morning walk around the water park timed to coincide with a rising/high tide. The female Tufted Duck is down to five ducklings (was seven), there were 22 non breeding Tufted present. 10 Greylag Geese with the gull flock which had around 600+ Black Headed Gull and 15 Med' Gull. Three Sand Martin was the best I could get after over 300 a few days ago. Female Tufted duck and the now five young Whitford Burrows NNR is on the other side of the estuary one of the 15 Med' Gulls White-tailed bumblebee, Bombus lucorum, leaving Bindweed flower

At last its stopped raining!!! This morning I again walked the 100m to the lake and proceeded to do the morning circuit, over 100 Sand Martins were feeding low over the water, yesterday there were over 300 of them in what would have been perfect ringing conditions!!! A Tufted duck with 7 newly hatched young, two immature Great Crested Grebes and an adult and immature Little Grebe set the scene. The beauty of this location is that within  500m you are on the beach/estuary and this morning there were 6 Mediterranean Gulls and 4 Little Egrets. I have found a lovely wooded/scrub area for ringing and am in the process of obtaining permission to ring so fingers crossed. Cefn Padrig, looking West along the Loughor estuary  Open mown grass area interspersed with uncut patches Coed Padrig ( Patricks wood) looks set for mist netting